Abhidharma

The first centuries after Śākyamuni Buddha's death
saw the rise of multiple schools of thought and teacher lineages within
the Buddhist community as it spread throughout the Indian subcontinent.
These new forms of scholarly monastic communities had distinct
theoretical and practical interests and, in their efforts to organize,
interpret, and reexamine the Buddha's scattered teachings, they
developed a particular system of thought and method of exposition
called Abhidharma (Pali, Abhidhamma). The Sanskrit term
abhidharma seems to derive from the expression
“concerning (abhi) the teaching(s) (Skt.,
dharma, Pali, dhamma).” For the Buddhist
exegetical tradition, however, the term means approximately
“higher” or “further” teaching, and it refers
both to the doctrinal investigations of the new scholastic movement and
to the body of texts yielded by its systematic exposition of Buddhist
thought. This body of literature includes the third of the “three
baskets” (Skt., tripiṭaka, Pali,
tipiṭaka) of the Buddhist canon, namely, the
Abhidharma-piṭaka (Pali,
Abhidhamma-piṭaka), its commentaries, and later
exegetical texts.

Both as an independent literary genre and a branch of thought and
inquiry, Abhidharma is to be contrasted with Sūtrānta, the
system of the Buddha's discourses (Skt., sūtras,
Pali, suttas). Unlike the earlier Buddhist discourses that are
colloquial in nature, the Abhidharma method presents the Buddha's
teachings in technical terms that are carefully defined to ensure
analytical exactitude. In content, Abhidharma is distinctive in its
efforts to provide the theoretical counterpart to the Buddhist practice
of meditation and, more broadly, a systematic account of sentient
experience. It does so by analyzing conscious experience—and in
this sense one's “world”—into its constituent
mental and physical events (Skt., dharmā, Pali,
dhammā, hereafter dharmas/dhammas respectively).
The overarching inquiry subsuming both the analysis of dharmas
into multiple categories and their synthesis into a unified structure
by means of their manifold relationships of causal conditioning is
referred to as the “dharma theory.” The exhaustive
investigations into the nature and interaction of dharmas
extended into the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, and ontology,
and generated doctrinal controversies among different Buddhist schools.
The Abhidharma analysis of and methods of argumentation about these
controversies provided the framework of reference and defined the
agenda for the Mahāyāna schools of Madhyamaka and
Yogācāra. As a distinct doctrinal movement, then, Abhidharma
had a remarkable impact on subsequent Buddhist thought and gave rise to
Buddhist systematic philosophy and hermeneutics.

The early history of Buddhism in India is remarkably little known
and the attempt to construct a consistent chronology of that history
still engrosses the minds of contemporary scholars. A generally
accepted tradition has it that some time around the beginning of the
third century BCE, the primitive Buddhist community divided into two
parties or fraternities: the Sthaviras (Pali, Theriyas) and the
Mahāsāṅghikas, each of which thenceforth had its own
ordination traditions. Throughout the subsequent two centuries or so,
doctrinal disputes arose between these two parties, resulting in the
formation of various schools of thought (vāda;
ācariyavāda) and teacher lineages
(ācariyakula) (Vin 51–54; Mhv V
12–13. See Cousins 1991, 27–28; Frauwallner 1956, 5ff &
130ff; Lamotte 1988, 271ff).

According to traditional Buddhist accounts, by the time the
Mahāyāna doctrines arose, roughly in the first century BCE,
there were eighteen sub-sects or schools of Sthaviras, the tradition
ancestral to the Theravāda (“advocates of the doctrine of
the elders”). The number eighteen, though, became conventional in
Buddhist historiography for symbolic and mnemonic reasons (Obeyesekere
1991) and, in fact, different Buddhist sources preserve divergent lists
of schools which sum up to more than eighteen. The likelihood is that
the early formative period of the Buddhist community gave rise to
multiple intellectual branches that developed spontaneously due to the
geographical extension of the community over the entire Indian
subcontinent and subject to the particular problems that confronted
each monastic community (saṅgha). Each
saṅgha tended to specialize in a specific branch of
learning, had its own practical customs and relations with lay circles,
and was influenced by the particular territories, economy, and use of
language and dialect prevalent in its environment. Indeed, the names of
the “eighteen schools” are indicative of their origins in
characteristic doctrines, geographical locations, or the legacy of
particular founders: for instance, Sarvāstivāda
(“advocates of the doctrine that all things exist”),
Sautrāntikas (“those who rely on the
sūtras”)/Dārṣṭāntikas
(“those who employ
examples”),[1]
and Pudgalavāda
(“those who affirm the existence of the person”);
Haimavatas (“those of the snowy mountains”); or
Vātsīputrīyas (“those affiliated with
Vātsīputra”) respectively. As noted by Gethin (1998,
52), rather than sects or denominations as in Christianity, “at
least some of the schools mentioned by later Buddhist tradition are
likely to have been informal schools of thought in the manner of
‘Cartesians,’ ‘British Empiricists,’ or
‘Kantians’ for the history of modern
philosophy.”[2]

It is customarily assumed that the multiple ancient Buddhist schools
transmitted their own versions of Abhidharma collections, but only two
complete canonical collections are preserved, representing two schools:
the Sarvāstivāda, who emerged as an independent school from
within the Sthaviras around the second or first century BCE, became
dominant in north, especially northwest India, and spread to central
Asia; and the Sinhalese Theravāda, a branch of the Sthaviras that
spread out in south India and parts of southeast Asia. These two extant
collections comprise the third of the “three baskets”
(Skt., tripiṭaka, Pali, tipiṭaka) of the
Buddhist canon. The exegetical traditions of the Sarvāstivāda
and Theravāda understand their respective canonical Abhidharma to
consist of a set of seven texts, though each school specifies a
different set of texts. The Sarvāstivādin
Abhidharma-piṭaka consists of the
Saṅgītiparyāya (Discourse on the
Collective Recitation), the Dharmaskandha (Compendium
ofDharmas), the
Prajñaptiśāstra (Manual of
Concepts), the Vijñānakāya
(Compendium of Consciousness), the
Dhātukāya (Compendium of Elements), the
Prakaraṇapāda (LiteraryExposition), and the Jñānaprasthāna
(The Foundation of Knowledge). These seven texts survive in
full only in their ancient Chinese translations. The Theravādin
Abhidhamma-piṭaka comprises the
Dhammasaṅgaṇi (Enumeration ofDhammas), the Vibhaṅga (Analysis), the
Dhātukathā (Discourse on Elements), the
Puggalapaññatti (Designation of
Persons), the Kathāvatthu (Points of
Discussion), the Yamaka (Pairs), and the
Paṭṭhāna (Causal Conditions). These
seven texts are preserved in Pali and all but the Yamaka have
been translated into English.

Later generations composed commentaries on the canonical Abhidharma
and introduced a variety of exegetical manuals that expound the
essentials of the canonical systems. These post-canonical texts are the
products of single authors and display fully developed polemical
stances and sectarian worldviews of their respective schools. Much of
the Theravāda Abhidhamma system is contained in
Buddhaghosa's comprehensive Visuddhimagga (The Path
of Purification, fifth century CE). More direct introductory
Abhidhamma manuals are Buddhadatta's
Abhidhammāvatāra (Introduction to
Abhidhamma, fifth century CE) and Anuruddha's
Abhidhammatthasaṅgaha (Compendium of the Topics of
Abhidhamma, twelfth century CE). The Sarvāstivāda
tradition preserves in Chinese translation three different recensions
of an authoritative Abhidharma commentary or
vibhāṣā dated to the first or second century
CE, the last and best known of which is called the
Mahāvibhāṣā. The
vibhāṣā compendia document several centuries
of scholarly activity representing multiple Sarvāstivāda
branches, most notably the Sarvāstivādins of Kashmir who are
known as Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣika. The
Sarvāstivāda manual most influential for later Chinese and
Tibetan Buddhism, however, is Vasubandhu's
Abhidharmakośa (Treasury of Abhidharma, fifth
century CE). The Abhidharmakośa's auto-commentary
contains substantial criticism of orthodox Sarvāstivāda
positions, which later Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣika
masters attempted to refute. Particularly famous in this category is
the Nyāyānusāra (Conformance to Correct
Principle) of Saṅghabhadra, a contemporary of Vasubandhu.
This comprehensive treatise reestablishes orthodox
Sarvāstivāda views and is considered one of the final
Sarvāstivāda works to have survived.

In sum, the Abhidharma/Abhidhamma texts are by and large
compositions contemporary with the formative period in the history of
the early Buddhist schools, providing the means by which one group
could define itself and defend its position against the divergent
interpretations and criticisms of other parties. Although much of the
Abhidharma mindset and something of its method draw on the
Āgamas/Nikāyas, i.e., the collections of sūtras
(Pali, suttas), the main body of its literature contains
interpretations of the Buddha's discourses specific to each
school of thought and philosophical elaborations of selectively
emphasized doctrinal issues. These continued to be refined by
subsequent generations of monks who contributed to the consolidation of
the two surviving Theravāda and Sarvāstivāda
schools.

Scholarly opinion has generally been divided between two alternative
interpretations of the term abhidharma, both of which hinge
upon the denotation of the prefix abhi. First, taking
abhi in the sense of “with regard to,”
abhidharma is understood as a discipline whose subject matter
is the Dharma, the Buddha's teachings. Second, using
abhi in the sense of preponderance and distinction,
abhidharma has also been deemed a distinct, higher teaching;
the essence of the Buddha's teachings or that which goes beyond
what is given in the Buddha's discourses, in a sense somewhat
reminiscent of the term “metaphysics” (e.g., Dhs-a
2–3; Horner 1941; von Hinüber 1994). Buddhist tradition
itself differentiates between the Sūtrānta and Abhidharma
methods of instructing the teachings by contrasting the
Sūtrānta “way of putting things” in partial,
figurative terms that require further clarification, versus the
Abhidharma exposition and catechism that expound the teachings fully,
in non-figurative terms (A IV 449–456; Dhs-a
154). This coincides with additional distinctions the tradition makes
between texts that have implicit meaning (Skt., neyārtha,
Pali, neyyattha) versus those that have explicit meaning
(Skt., nītārtha, Pali nītattha)
(A I 60; Ps I 18), and texts that are expressed in
conventional terms (Skt., saṃvṛti, Pali,
sammuti) versus others that are expressed in ultimate terms
(Skt., paramārtha, Pali, paramattha)
(Vibh 100–101; Mp I
94–97).[3]
From Abhidharma
perspective, the sūtras were conveyed in conventional
terms whose ultimate meaning required further interpretation.

The texts of the canonical Abhidharma are works that evolved over
decades, if not centuries, out of materials already present in the
Sūtra and Vinaya portions of the canon. This is evidenced in two
characteristics of the genre that can be traced to earlier Buddhist
literature. The first is the analytical style of the texts, which
attempt to summarize meticulously the significant points of the Dharma
and provide a comprehensive taxonomy of the mental and physical factors
that constitute sentient experience. This analytical enterprise
includes the arrangement of major parts of the material around
detailed lists of factors and combinations of sets of their categories
yielding matrices (Skt., mātṛkā, Pali,
mātikā) of doctrinal topics. Already in the
collections of the Buddha's discourses, certain texts are
arranged according to taxonomic lists, providing formulaic treatment of
doctrinal items that are expounded elsewhere. Lists were clearly
powerful mnemonic devices, and their prevalence in early Buddhist
literature can be explained partly as a consequence of its being
composed and for some centuries preserved
orally.[4]
For instance, one of the four
primary Āgamas/Nikāyas, the collection of
“grouped” sayings (saṃyukta/saṃyutta),
groups the Buddha's teachings according to specific topics,
including the four noble truths, the four ways of establishing
mindfulness, the five aggregates, the six sense faculties, the seven
constituents of awakening, the noble eightfold path, the twelve links
of dependent origination, and others. Similar taxonomic lists form the
table of contents of the Vibhaṅga and
Puggalapaññatti of the Theravāda and the
Saṅgītiparyāya and Dharmaskandha of
the Sarvāstivāda, which are structured as commentaries on
those lists.

The second characteristic of Abhidharma literature is its bent for
discursive hermeneutics through catechetical exposition. The texts seem
to be the products of discussions about the doctrine within the early
Buddhist community. Again, such discussions are already found in the
Āgama/Nikāya collections (e.g., M I 292–305, III
202–257): they often begin with a doctrinal point to be clarified and
proceed to expound the topic at stake using a pedagogical method of
question and answer. The texts also record more formal methods of
argumentation and refutation of rival theories that shed light on the
evolution of the Abhidharma as responding to the demands of an
increasingly polemical environment. The process of institutionalization
undergone by Buddhist thought at the time and the spread of the
Buddhist community across the Indian subcontinent coincided with a
transition from oral to written methods of textual transmission and
with the rise of monastic debates concerning the doctrine among the
various Buddhist schools. Intellectual assimilation and doctrinal
disputes also existed between the Buddhist monastic community and the
contemporaneous Sanskrit Grammarians, Jains, and Brahmanical
schools with their evolving scholastic and analytical movements, which
must also have contributed to the Abdhidharma discursive hermeneutics
and argumentative style. The dialectic format and the display of
awareness of differences in doctrinal interpretation are the hallmarks
of the Kathāvatthu and the
Vijñānakāya. Later on, post-canonical
Abhidharma texts became complex philosophical treatises employing
sophisticated methods of argumentation and independent investigations
that resulted in doctrinal conclusions quite far removed from their
canonical antecedents.

Abhidharma literature, then, arose from two approaches to discussing
the Dharma within the early Buddhist community: the first intended to
summarize and analyze the significant points of the Buddha's
teachings, the second to elaborate on and interpret the doctrines by
means of monastic disputations (Cousins 1983, 10; Gethin 1992b,
165).

The Buddha's discourses collected in the
Āgamas/Nikāyas analyze sentient experience from different
standpoints: in terms of name-and-form (nāma-rūpa),
the five aggregates (Skt., skandha, Pali, khandha), the
twelve sense fields (āyatana), or the eighteen sense
elements (dhātu). All these modes of analysis provide
descriptions of sentient experience as a succession of physical and
mental processes that arise and cease subject to various causes and
conditions. A striking difference between the Sūtrānta and
the Abhidharma worldviews is that the Abhidharma reduces the time scale
of these processes so they are now seen as operating from moment to
moment. Put differently, the Abhidharma reinterprets the terms by which
the sūtras portray sequential processes as applying to
discrete, momentary events (Cousins 1983, 7; Ronkin 2005, 66–78).

These events are referred to as dharmas (Pali,
dhammas), differently from the singular dharma/dhamma
that signifies the Buddha's teaching(s). The
Āgamas/Nikāyas use the form dharmas to convey a
pluralistic representation of encountered phenomena, i.e., all sensory
phenomena of whatever nature as we experience them through the six
sense faculties (the five ordinary physical senses plus mind
[manas]). The canonical Abhidharma treatises, however, draw
subtle distinctions within the scope of the mental and marginalize the
differences between multiple varieties of mental capacities. Within
this context, dharmas are seen as the objects of a specific
mental capacity called mental cognitive awareness (Skt.,
manovijñāṇa, Pali,
manoviññāṇa) that is considered the
central cognitive operation in the process of sensory perception.
Mental cognitive awareness is a particular type of consciousness that
discerns between the stimuli impinging upon the sense faculties and
that emerges when the requisite conditions come together.
Dharmas are not merely mental objects like ideas, concepts, or
memories. Rather, as the objects of mental cognitive awareness,
dharmas may be rendered apperceptions: rapid
consciousness-types (citta) that arise and cease in sequential
streams, each having its own object, and that interact with the five
externally directed sensory modalities (visual, auditory, etc.) of
cognitive awareness. The canonical Abhidharma texts portray
dharmas, then, as psycho-physical events with diverse
capacities by means of which the mind unites and assimilates a
particular perception, especially one newly presented, to a larger set
or mass of ideas already possessed, thus comprehending and
conceptualizing
it.[5]

Ultimately, dharmas are all that there is: all experiential
events are understood as arising from the interaction of
dharmas. While the analogy of atoms may be useful here,
dharmas notably embrace both physical and mental phenomena,
and are generally understood as evanescent events, occurrences, or
dynamic properties rather than enduring
substances.[6]
The Abhidharma exegesis thus
attempts to provide an exhaustive account of every possible type of
experience—every type of occurrence that may possibly present
itself in one's consciousness—in terms of its constituent
dharmas. This enterprise involves breaking down the objects of
ordinary perception into their constituent, discrete dharmas
and clarifying their relations of causal conditioning. The overarching
inquiry subsuming both the analysis of dharmas into multiple
categories and their synthesis into a unified structure by means of
their manifold relationships of causal conditioning is referred to as
the “dharma theory.”

The Abhidharma attempts to individuate and determine the unique
identity of each dharma yield complex intersecting taxonomies
of dharmas organized by multiple criteria or sets of
qualities. Abhidharma texts of different schools proposed different
dharma taxonomies, enumerating a more or less finite number of
dharma categories. It is important to remember, though, that
the term dharma signifies both any category that represents a
type of occurrence as well as any of its particular tokens or
instances. The Theravāda introduced a system of eighty-two
dhamma categories, meaning that there are eighty-two possible
types of occurrence in the experiential world, not eighty-two
occurrences. These are organized into a fourfold categorization. The
first three categories include the bare phenomenon of consciousness
(citta) that encompasses a single dhamma type and of
which the essential characteristic is the cognizing of an object;
associated mentality (cetasika) that encompasses fifty-two
dhammas; and materiality or physical phenomena
(rūpa) that include twenty-eight dhammas that
make up all physical occurrences (Abhidh-av 1). All the
eighty-one dhamma types in these three broad categories are
conditioned (saṅkhata). Conditioned dhammas
arise and cease subject to numerous causes and conditions and
constitute sentient experience in all realms of the round of rebirth
(saṃsāra).[7]
The eighty-second dhamma that
comprises the fourth category is unconditioned
(asaṅkhata): it neither arises nor ceases through causal
interaction. The single occurrence in this fourth category is nirvana
(Pali, nibbāna).

The Sarvāstivāda adopted a system of seventy-five basic
types of dharmas organized into a fivefold categorization. The
first four categories comprise all conditioned
(saṃskṛta) dharmas and include, again,
consciousness (citta, one single dharma); associated
mentality (caitta, encompasses forty-six dharmas);
and physical phenomena (rūpa, eleven dharmas);
but also factors dissociated from thought
(cittaviprayuktasaṃskāra, fourteen
dharmas). The last category is mentioned neither in the
sūtras nor in the Theravāda lists, but is found
predominantly in northern Indian Abhidharma texts of all periods. The
specific dharmas included within it vary, but they are all
understood as explaining a range of experiential events, being
themselves dissociated from both material form and thought. The fifth
category in the Sarvāstivāda taxonomy, that of the
unconditioned (asaṃskṛta), comprises three
dharmas, namely, space and two states of cessation
(nirodha), the latter being a term that connotes the
culmination of the Buddhist path (Cox 1995; 2004A, 553–554).

The Abhidharma analyzes in great detail each of these categories,
thus creating relational schemata whereby each acknowledged experience,
phenomenon, or occurrence can be determined and identified by
particular definition and function. Especially important is the
analysis of consciousness or citta, on which much of
Abhidharma doctrinal thought is built. Consider the Theravāda
analysis of consciousness, whose basic principles are shared with the
other Abhidharma systems.

The epitome of the operation of consciousness is citta as
experienced in the process of sensory perception that, in Abhidharma
(as in Buddhism in general), is deemed the paradigm of sentient
experience. Citta can never be experienced as bare
consciousness in its own origination moment, for consciousness is
always intentional, directed to a particular object that is cognized
by means of certain mental factors. Citta, therefore, always
occurs associated with its appropriate cetasikas or mental
factors that perform diverse functions and that emerge and cease
together with it, having the same object (either sensuous or mental)
and grounded in the same sense faculty. Any given consciousness
moment—also signified by the very term citta—is
thus a unique assemblage of citta and its associated mental
factors such as feeling, conceptualization, volition, or attention, to
name several of those required in any thought process. Each assemblage
is conscious of just one object, arises for a brief instant and then
falls away, followed by another citta combination that picks
up a different object by means of its particular associated mental
factors.

The classic Abhidhamma scheme as gleaned from the first book of the
Abhidhamma-piṭaka, the
Dhammasaṅgaṇi, and as organized by the
commentarial tradition describes eighty-nine basic types of
consciousness moments, i.e., assemblages of citta and
cetasika (Dhs Book I; Vism XIV 81–110;
Abhidh-av 1–15; Abhidh-s 1–5). It
classifies these basic citta types most broadly according to
their locus of occurrence, beginning with the sense-sphere
(kāmāvacara) that includes forty-five citta
types, most prominently those that concern the mechanics of perception
of sensuous objects; next come eighteen form-sphere
(rūpāvacara) consciousnesses that concern the mind
that has attained meditative absorption (jhāna);
followed by eight formless-sphere
(arūpāvacara) consciousnesses that constitute the
mind that has reached further meditative attainments known as formless
states; finally, there are eighteen world-transcending
(lokuttara) consciousnesses that constitute the mind at the
moment of awakening itself: these have nirvana as their object. Within
these four broad categories various other classifications operate. For
instance, some dhammas are wholesome, others unwholesome; some
are resultant, others are not; some are motivated, others are without
motivations. These attribute matrices, writes Cox (2004A, 552), form
“an abstract web of all possible conditions and characteristics
exhibited by actually occurring dharmas. The individual
character of any particular dharma can then be specified in
accordance with every taxonomic possibility, resulting in a complete
assessment of that dharma's range of possible
occurrences.”

Various scholars have argued that this system reflects a dynamic
conception of dharmas: that Abhidharma understands
dharmas as properties, activities, or patterns of
interconnection that construct one's world, not as static substances
(e.g., Cox 2004A, 549ff; Gethin 1992A, 149–150; Karunadasa 2010,
Ch. 4; Nyanaponika 1998, Ch. 2 & 4; Ronkin 2005, Ch. 4; Waldron
2002, 2–16). For Abhidharma, as for Buddhism in general, the
limits of one's world are set by the limits of one's lived experience,
and the causal foundation for lived experience is the operation of
one's cognitive apparatus. According to the Buddhist path, the nature
of lived experience as based on one's cognitive apparatus is to be
contemplated by investigating the very nature of one's mind through
the practice of meditation. From this perspective, Abhidharma
represents the theoretical counterpart to the practice of meditation.
Within this context of Buddhist practice, dharmas are
distinct (but interrelated) functions, energies, or causally
significant aspects—in this sense
“components”—of consciousness moments.

The categorial analysis of dharmas is therefore a
meditative practice of discernment of dharmas: it is
not intended as a closed inventory of all existing dharmas
“out there” in their totality, but rather “has a dual
soteriological purpose involving two simultaneous processes” (Cox
2004A, 551). First, as “evaluative” analysis, the
dharma typology maps out the constituents and workings of the
mind and accounts for what makes up ordinary wholesome consciousness as
opposed to the awakened mind. For instance, consciousness types that
arise in a mind that has attained meditative absorption become
increasingly refined and may never involve certain tendencies or
defilements that might potentially occur in ordinary (even wholesome)
consciousness. To watch dharmas as dharmas, writes
Gethin (2004, 536), “involves watching how they arise and
disappear, how the particular qualities that one wants to abandon can
be abandoned, and how the particular qualities that one wants to
develop can be developed. Watching dhammas in this way one
begins to understand […] certain truths
(sacca)—four to be exact—about these
dhammas: their relation to suffering, its arising, its ceasing
and the way to its ceasing. And in seeing these four truths one
realizes the ultimate truth—dhamma—about
the
world.”[8]

The second, “descriptive” soteriological process
involved in the categorization of dharmas reveals the fluid
nature of sentient experience and validates the fundamental Buddhist
teaching of not-self (Skt., anātman, Pali,
anatta). The increasingly detailed enumerations of
dharmas demonstrate that no essence or independent self could
be found in any phenomenon or its constituents, since all aspects of
experience are impermanent, arising and passing away subject to
numerous causes and conditions. Even the handful dharmas that
are categorized as unconditioned (that is, having no cause and no
effect) are shown to be not-self. The practice of the discrimination of
dharmas thus undermines the apparently solid world we
emotionally and intellectually grasp at that is replete with objects of
desire and attachment. “Try to grasp the world of the
Dhammasaṅgaṇi, or the
Paṭṭhāna,” Gethin notes (1992B, 165),
and it runs through one's fingers.”

Nevertheless, the very notion of the plurality of dharmas
as the building blocks or the final units of analysis of sentient
experience signifies a considerable shift in the Buddhist understanding
of dharma. Abhidharma thought was gradually drawn into
espousing a naturalistic explanation of dharmas as the
fundamental constituents of the phenomenal world, increasingly
associating dharmas as primary existents. The category of the
unconditioned within the dharma taxonomy also asserted the
possibility of enduring or permanent dharmas, in contrast to
all other dharmas that arise and cease through causal
interaction. The Abhidharma exegesis, then, occasioned among Buddhist
circles doctrinal controversies that could be termed ontological around
such issues as what the nature of a dharma is; what, in the
internal constitution of a dharma, makes it the very
particular it is; the manner of existence of dharmas; the
dynamics of their causal interaction; and the nature of the reality
they constitute. The distinctive principles and their ensuing
ontological interpretations constructed by the Buddhist schools were
largely shaped by a radical construal of impermanence as
momentariness.

Both the Sarvāstivāda and the post-canonical
Theravāda constructed a radical doctrine of momentariness (Skt.,
kṣāṇavāda, Pali,
khāṇavāda) that atomizes phenomena temporally
by dissecting them into a succession of discrete, momentary events that
pass out of existence as soon as they have originated. Albeit not a
topic in its own right in the Buddha's discourses, the doctrine
of momentariness appears to have originated in conjunction with the
principle of impermanence (Skt., anitya, Pali,
anicca). This idea is basic to the Buddha's
empirically-oriented teaching about the nature of sentient experience:
all physical and mental phenomena are in a constant process of
conditioned construction and are interconnected, being dependently
originated (e.g., A I 286; M I 230, 336, 500;
S II 26, III 24–5, 96–9, IV 214). The Suttanta
elaboration on these three interlocking ideas results in a formula
(A I 152) that states that conditioned phenomena (Skt.,
saṃskārā, Pali,
saṅkhārā) are of the nature of origination
(uppāda), “change of what endures”
(ṭhitassa aññathatta), and dissolution or
cessation (vaya). This formula is known as the “three
characteristics of what is conditioned”
(tisaṅkhatalakkhaṇa). The
Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣika introduced four
characteristics of conditioned phenomena: origination, endurance,
decay, and dissolution. These are classified under the dharma
category of “factors dissociated from thought.”

The Buddhist schools used the characteristics of conditioned
phenomena as a hermeneutic tool with which to reinterpret impermanence
in terms of momentariness. The
Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣika proposed a fully-fledged
doctrine of momentariness according to which all physical and mental
phenomena are momentary. The Sarvāstivādins use the term
“moment” (kṣaṇa) in a highly technical
sense as the smallest, definite unit of time that cannot be subdivided,
the length of which came to be equated with the duration of mental
events as the briefest conceivable entities. There is no
Sarvāstivādin consensus on the length of a moment, but the
texts indicate figures between 0.13 and 13 milliseconds in modern terms
(Gethin 1998, 221; von Rospatt 1995, 94–110). This usage presupposes an
atomistic conception of time, for time is not reckoned indefinitely
divisible. Indeed, the term kṣaṇa is often
discussed in juxtaposition to the concepts of material atoms and
syllables, which are likewise comprehended as indivisible.

Within the Sarvāstivāda framework, material reality
(rūpa-dharma) is reduced to discrete momentary
atoms, and much attention is drawn to ontological and
epistemological questions such as whether sense objects are real at any
time, or whether atoms contribute separately or collectively to the
generation of perception. Atomic reality is understood as constantly
changing: what appears to us as a world made up of enduring substances
with changing qualities is, in fact, a series of moments that arise and
perish in rapid succession. This process is not random, but operates in
accordance with the specific capability and function of each atom. The
spirit of this atomistic analysis of material reality applies equally
to mental reality: consciousness is understood as a succession of
discrete consciousness moments that arise and cease
extremely
rapidly.[9]
Thus,
the ratio of change between material and mental phenomena in any given
moment is one to one: they occur in perfect synchronicity (Kim 1999,
54). On this point the Sautrāntika agreed with the
Sarvāstivāda.

The Sarvāstivādins (“advocates of the doctrine that
all things exist”) were unique in their stance that the
characteristics of conditioned phenomena exist separately as real
entities within each moment. Their claim, then, is that all conditioned
dharmas—whether past, present, or future—exist as
real entities (dravyatas) within the span of any given moment.
This induced a host of problems, one of which is that the
Sarvāstivāda definition of a moment is difficult to reconcile
with its conception as the shortest unit of time (von Rospatt 1995,
44–46 & 97–98). The Sarvāstivāda replies to
this criticism by stating that the activities (kāritra)
of the four characteristics of conditioned phenomena are sequential:
the limits between the birth and dissolution of any event are referred
to as one moment. This solution, however, implies that a single event
undergoes four phases within a given moment, which inevitably infringes
upon its momentariness (Cox 1995, 151; von Rospatt 1995, 52ff).

The Theravādins created their own distinct version of the
doctrine of momentariness. They do not seem to have been as concerned
as the Sarvāstivādins with the ontology and epistemology of
material and mental realities per se. Rather, they were more
preoccupied with the psychological apparatus governing the process of
cognizing of sense data, and hence with the changing ratio between
material and mental phenomena. The Yamaka of the canonical
Abhidhamma offers what is probably the first textual occurrence of the
term “moment” (khaṇa) in the sense of a very
brief stretch of time that is divided into origination and cessation
instants (Kim 1999, 60–61). Relying on the three characteristics
of conditioned phenomena, the Pali commentaries later present a scheme
wherein each moment of every phenomenon is subdivided into three
different instants of origination (uppādakkhaṇa),
endurance (ṭhitikkhaṇa) and cessation
(bhaṅgakkhaṇa)
(Spk II 266; Mp II 252). These are three phases of a
single momentary phenomenon defined as one single dhamma or
consciousness moment. A dhamma occurs in the first sub-moment,
endures in the second, and ceases in the third (Karunadasa 2010, 234ff). The commentarial
tradition thus analyzes phenomena temporally by dissecting them into a
succession of discrete, momentary events that fall away as soon as they
have originated in consciousness. As one event is exhausted, it
conditions a new event of its kind that proceeds immediately
afterwards. The result is an uninterrupted, flowing continuum
(santāna) of causally connected momentary events. These
succeed each other so fast that we conceive of the phenomena they
constitute as temporally extended.

The Theravādins use the term khaṇa as the
expression for a brief instant, the dimension of which is not fixed but
may be determined by the context. For example,
cittakkhaṇa refers to the instant
taken by one mental event. In this basic sense as denoting a very brief
stretch of time, the term “moment” does not entail an
atomistic conception of a definite and ultimate, smallest unit of time,
but leaves open the possibility that time is infinitely divisible (von
Rospatt 1995, 59–60 & 94–95). Here the three moments of
origination, endurance, and cessation do not correspond to three
different entities. Rather, they represent three phases of a single
momentary phenomenon and are defined as one single consciousness
moment: a dhamma occurs in the first sub-moment, endures in
the second sub-moment and perishes in the third one. In this way, the
Theravādins avoided some of the difficulties faced by the
Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣikas, of how to compress the
characteristics of the conditioned into one single indivisible moment
and of how to account for their ontological status. The
Theravādins also claimed that only mental phenomena are momentary,
whereas material phenomena (e.g., common-sense objects) endure for a
stretch of time. The Theravādin commentarial tradition
subsequently elaborated on this proposition and produced a unique view
of the ratio between material and mental phenomena, asserting that a
material phenomenon lasts for sixteen or seventeen consciousness
moments (Kv 620; Vibh-a 25–28; Vism XX
24–26; Kim 1999, 79–80 & §3.1).

Despite their different interpretations of the concept of
momentariness, the early Buddhist schools all derived this concept from
the analysis of impermanence in terms of the dynamics of
dharmas qua physical and mental events. The equation of a
moment with the duration of these transient events as extremely short
occurrences—even the shortest conceivable—led to the direct
determination of the moment in terms of these occurrences. Yet the
doctrine of momentariness spawned a host of problems for the Buddhist
schools, particularly with regard to the status of the endurance moment
and to the explanation of continuity and conditioning interaction among
the dharmas (see section 5 below). If dharmas go
through an endurance phase or exist as real entities within the span of
any given moment, how can they be momentary? And if experience is an
array of strictly momentary dharmas, how can continuity and
causal conditioning be possible?

One might argue that the conceptual shift from
“impermanence” to “endurance” is a result of
scholastic literalism and testifies to the Abhidharma tendency towards
reification and hypostatization of dharmas (Gombrich 1996,
36–37, 96–97 & 106–107). Nevertheless, the object of the doctrine
of momentariness is not so much existence in time or the passage of
time per se, but rather, in epistemological terms and a somewhat
Bergsonian sense, the construction of temporal experience. Instead of a
transcendental matrix of order imposed on natural events from without,
time is seen as an inherent feature of the operation of
dharmas. The doctrine of momentariness analyzes
dharmas as they transpire through time: as psycho-physical
events that arise and cease in consciousness and, by the dynamics of
their rise and fall, construct time. The sequence of the three times is
therefore secondary, generated in and by the process of conditioned and
conditioning dharmas. In fact, the conceptual shift from the
principle of impermanence to the theory of momentariness is a shift in
time scales. While the Sūtrānta worldview interprets the
three times as referring to past, present, and future lives, the
Abhidharma sees them as phases that any conditioned dharma
undergoes each and every moment. Impermanence marks dharmas
over a period of time, but is also encapsulated in every single
consciousness moment (Vibh-a 7–8; Sv 991; Vism
XIV 191; Collins 1992, 227).

To preserve the principle of impermanence and explain continuity and
causal conditioning in ordinary experience, the Buddhist schools
introduced novel interpretations of the nature of dharmas. At
the heart of these interpretations is the concept of intrinsic nature
(Skt., svabhāva, Pali, sabhāva) that plays
a major role in the systematization of Abhidharma thought, is closely
related to the consolidation of the dharma theory, and is
regarded as that which gave an impetus to the Abhidharma growing
concern with ontology.

The term svabhāva/sabhāva does not feature in
the sūtras/suttas and its rare mentions in other
Sarvāstivāda and Theravāda canonical texts offer no
account of dharma as defined by a fixed intrinsic nature that
verifies its real
existence.[10]
This situation changes significantly in the
post-canonical literature, in which svabhāva becomes a
standard concept extensively used in dharma exegesis. A
recurring idea in the exegetical Abhidharma literature from the period
of the early vibhāṣā compendia onward is that
dharmas are defined by virtue of their svabhāva.
For instance, a definition transmitted in the
Abhidharmakośabhāṣya reads:
“dharma means ‘upholding,’ [namely],
upholding intrinsic nature (svabhāva),” and the
Mahāvibhāṣā states that “intrinsic
nature is able to uphold its own identity and not lose it […] as
in the case of unconditioned dharmas that are able to uphold
their own identity” (Cox 2004A, 558–559). Similarly, a definition
prevalent in Theravādin Abhidhamma commentaries is:
“dhammas are so called because they bear their intrinsic
natures, or because they are borne by causal conditions” (e.g.,
Dhs-a 39-40; Paṭis-a I 18;
Vism-mhṭ I 347). The commentaries also regularly equate
dhammas with their intrinsic natures, using the terms
dhamma and sabhāva interchangeably. For example,
the Visuddhimagga proclaims that “dhamma means
but intrinsic nature” (Vism VIII 246), and the
sub-commentary to the Dhammasaṅgaṇi indicates that
“there is no other thing called dhamma apart from the
intrinsic nature borne by it” and that “the term
sabhāva denotes the mere fact of being a
dhamma” (Dhs-mṭ 28 & 94; see also
Karunadasa 2010: Ch. 1).

These commentarial definitions of dharmas as carrying their
intrinsic natures should not be interpreted ontologically as implying
that dharmas are substances having inherent existence.
The Pali commentaries, cautions Gethin (2004, 533), “are often
viewed too much in the light of later controversies about the precise
ontological status of dharmas and the Madhyamaka critique of
the notion of svabhāva in the sense of ‘inherent
existence.’” In fact, defining dharmas as bearing
their intrinsic natures conveys the idea that there is no enduring
agent behind them. Adding that dharmas are borne by causal
conditions counters the idea of intrinsic natures borne by underlying
substances distinct from themselves. Just as dharmas are
psycho-physical events that occur dependently on appropriate conditions
and qualities, their intrinsic natures arise dependently on other
conditions and qualities rather than on a substratum more real than
they are (ibid; Karunadasa 1996, 13–16; Nyanaponika 1998,
40–41).

We must also note that the context within which dharmas are
rendered in terms of their intrinsic natures is that of categorization,
where multiple criteria and qualities are applied to create a
comprehensive taxonomic system that distinguishes the particular
character of any given dharma. Cox (2004A: 559–561) has shown
that in the early period of northern Indian Abhidharma texts, as
represented by the
Śāriputrābhidharmaśāstra and portions
of the Mahāvibhāṣā, the concept of
intrinsic nature develops within the context of the method of inclusion
(saṃgraha), that is, the process by which the inclusion
of dharmas within a specific category is to be applied.
Dharmas are determined (pariniṣpanna) by the
intrinsic nature that defines them and hence should not be considered
to possess a separately existing intrinsic nature.
“‘Determination’ implies two further features of
dharmas […] First, just as categories in a
well-structured taxonomic schema are distinct and not subject to
fluctuation, so also dharmas, as ‘determined,’ are
clearly and unalterably discriminated: they are uniquely individualized
and as such are not subject to confusion with other dharmas.
[Second,] determination by intrinsic nature undergoes no variation or
modification, and hence, dharmas, which are in effect types or
categories of intrinsic nature, are established as stable and
immutable” (ibid, 562). In the early
Sarvāstivāda exegetical texts, then, svabhāva
is used as an atemporal, invariable criterion determining what
a dharma is, not necessarily that a dharma
exists. The concern here is primarily with what makes categorial types
of dharma unique, rather than with the ontological status of
dharmas.

Nevertheless, from the foregoing categorial theory, the mature
Abhidharma drew ontological conclusions with regard to the reality of
dharmas. This transition in the conception of dharma
coincided with an inherent ambiguity in the term
svabhāva, which is grounded logically and etymologically
in the term bhāva that came to denote “mode of
existence” (ibid, 565–568). In the
vibhāṣā compendia and contemporaneous texts,
“the explicit emphasis upon categorization per se
recedes in importance as the focus shifts to clarifying the character
and eventually the ontological status of individual dharmas.
Accordingly, the term svabhāva acquires the dominant
sense of “intrinsic nature” specifying individual
dharmas […] And determining individual dharmas
through unique intrinsic nature also entails affirming their existence,
as a natural function both of the etymological sense of the term
svabhāva and of the role of dharmas as the
fundamental constituents of experience. This then leads to the
prominence of a new term that expressed this ontological focus: namely,
dravya” (ibid, 569). Dravya means
“real existence” and, within the Sarvāstivāda
framework, dharmas that are determined by intrinsic nature
exist as real entities (dravyatas), as opposed both to
composite objects of ordinary experience that exist provisionally and
to relative concepts or contingencies of time and place that exist
relatively. The presence of intrinsic nature indicates that a
dharma is a primary existent, irrespective of its
temporal status, namely, whether it is a past, present or future
dharma, and hence the Sarvāstivāda declaration that
“all things exist.”

The Theravāda rejected the Sarvāstivāda ontological
model, claiming that dhammas exist only in the present. But
the Theravāda Abhidhamma shares with the Sarvāstivāda
the same principles of dhamma analysis as a categorial theory
that individuates sentient experience. Here, too, the taxonomic
function of sabhāva gave rise to ontological connotations
of existence in the characterization of dhammas. As the final
units of Abhidhamma analysis, dhammas are reckoned the
ultimate constituents of experience. “There is nothing else,
whether a being, or an entity, or a man or a person,” a famous
Pali commentarial excerpt proclaims (Dhs-a
155).[11]
While this
statement is meant to refute the rival Pudgalavāda position of the
reality of the person by insisting that there is no being or person
apart from dhammas, there emerges the idea that the phenomenal
world is, at bottom, a world of dhammas: that within the
confines of sentient experience there is no other actuality apart from
dhammas and that what constitutes any given dhamma as
a discrete, individualized particular is its intrinsic nature. The
Theravāda elaborates on the concept of sabhāva in
juxtaposition to its theory of momentariness, and it acquires the sense
of what underlies a dhamma's endurance moment and as a
point of reference to the moments of origination and cessation. Before
a dhamma eventuates it does not yet obtain an intrinsic nature
and when it ceases it is denuded of this intrinsic nature. As a present
occurrence, though, while possessing its intrinsic nature, it
exists as an ultimate reality and its intrinsic nature is evidence of
its actual existence as such (Dhs-a 45; Vism VIII
234, XV 15). One commentarial passage even goes so far as naming this
instant “the acquisition of a self”
(Vism-mhṭ I 343).

The Abhidharma's ontological investigations occasioned a host
of doctrinal problems that became the subject of an ongoing debate among
the Buddhist schools. One primary controversy centered on the principle
of impermanence: if all phenomena are impermanent, the Sautrāntika
challenged the Sarvāstivāda and the Theravāda, then
dharmas must be changing continuously and can neither exist in
the past and future nor endure for any period of time, however short,
in the present. On the other hand, the systematic analysis of
experience in terms of momentary dharmas required the
Abhidharma to provide a rigorous account of the processes that govern
psychological and physical continuity. What fuels these processes is
causal interaction, but the very notion of causation is allegedly
compromised by the theory of momentariness. If causes, conditions, and
their results are all momentary events, how can an event that has ended
have a result? How can an event that undergoes distinct stages of
origination, endurance, and cessation in a brief moment have causal
efficacy? Notwithstanding their doctrinal differences, both the
Sarvāstivāda and the Theravāda Abhidhamma had to
confront these challenges, and they did so by formulating complex
theories of immediate contiguity that grant causal efficacy.

The Sarvāstivāda developed an analysis of causal
conditioning in terms of intricate interrelations among four types of
condition (pratyaya) and six types of cause (hetu).
As documented in the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (AKB
2.49) based on canonical texts including the
Vijñānakāya, the
Prakaraṇapāda, and the
Jñānaprasthāna, the four conditions are: 1)
root cause (literally “cause as condition,”
hetupratyaya), reckoned the foremost in inciting the process
of fruition and origination; 2) immediate antecedent, which holds
between a consciousness moment and its immediately preceding moment in
that consciousness series; 3) object support, which applies to all
dharmas insofar as they are intentional objects of
consciousness; and 4) predominance, which facilitates sensory
discriminative awareness, e.g., the faculty of sight's
predominance over visual cognitive awareness. The six causes are: 1)
instrumentality (kāraṇahetu), deemed the primary
factor in the production of a result; 2) simultaneity or coexistence,
which connects phenomena that arise simultaneously; 3) homogeneity,
explaining the homogenous flow of dharmas that evokes the
seeming continuity of phenomena; 4) association, which operates only
between mental dharmas and explains why the elements of
consciousness always appear as assemblages of mental factors; 5)
dominance, which forms one's habitual cognitive and behaviorist
dispositions; and 6) fruition, referring to whatever is the result of
actively wholesome or unwholesome dharmas. The four conditions
and six causes interact with each other in explaining phenomenal
experience: for instance, each consciousness moment acts both as the
homogenous cause as well as the immediate antecedent condition of the
rise of consciousness and its concomitants in a subsequent
moment.[12]

Underlying this analysis of causal conditioning is the notion of
existence as efficacious action, or karma. Karma, a fundamental
principle in Buddhist thought from its inception, is what fuels the
repetitive experience in saṃsāra, the round
of
rebirth.[13]
In
Abhidharma exegesis, the efficacious action or distinctive functioning
of dharmas is understood predominantly as causal functioning.
For the orthodox Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣika, the
existence of dharmas as real entities (dravyatas) is
determined by both their intrinsic nature and particular causal
functioning. Intrinsic nature, however, is an atemporal determinant of
real existence. What determines a dharma's
spatio-temporal existence is its distinctive causal functioning:
past and future dharmas have capability
(sāmarthya) of functioning, while present
dharmas also exert a distinctive activity
(kāritra). Present activity is an internal causal
efficacy that assists in the production of an effect within a
dharma's own consciousness series. It is this activity
that determines a dharma's present existence and defines
the limits of the span of its present moment. Capability, by contrast,
is a conditioning efficacy externally directed towards another
consciousness series: it constitutes a condition that assists another
dharma in the production of its own effect (Cox 2004A, 570–573;
Williams 1981, 240–243). A dharma's present
activity arises and falls away, but past and future dharmas
all have potential for causal functioning and exist as real entities
due to their intrinsic nature. For the Sarvāstivāda, this
model—which insists on constant change within the limits of the
present moment and implies the existence of dharmas in the
three time periods—preserves both the principle of impermanence
yet explains continuity and causal efficacy.

The Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣika distinction between
a dharma's activity and capability implies that each
dharma or consciousness moment effects the next moment within
its series, but it can also act as a contributory condition towards
producing a different sort of effect. Activity engenders the next
moment within a dharma's series, while capability
generates a different effect and explains the causal efficacy of past
dharmas. Williams (1981, 246–247) helpfully notes that
we may render this “horizontal” and “vertical”
causality, within a consciousness series and transcending it
respectively. For example, an instant of visual awareness horizontally
produces the next moment of visual awareness and may or may not,
depending on other factors such as light and so on, vertically produce
vision of the object. “It follows that to be present is to have
horizontal causality, which may or may not include vertical
causality—a fact which serves to remind us that we are dealing
here with primary existents which are frequently positioned within the
system in terms of what they do” (ibid). Thus activity
or horizontal causality—a dharma's function of
precipitating the next moment of its own consciousness
series—individuates that
dharma as a particular event of its kind. A
dharma's capability or vertical causality, by which it
facilitates the occurrence of other dharmas outside its
consciousness series, locates it within the web of interrelations that
connects it with the incessant rise and fall of other
dharmas, and hence further individuates it as that very
particular dharma by manifesting its unique quality and
intensity of operation.

The Saturāntika and the Theravāda developed alternative
theories of causal conditioning in conjunction with their rejection of
the Sarvāstivāda ontological model and their claim that
dharmas exist only in the present. The Sautrāntika
explained causal interaction among past and future dharmas by
reference to the idea of “seeds” (bīja), or
modifications in subsequent dharma series. The
Sautrāntika theory of seeds is the precursor of two extremely
important concepts of later Mahāyāna Buddhist thought,
namely, the Yogācāra's concepts of “store
consciousness” (ālayavijñāna) and of
Buddha-nature (tathāgatagarbha) (Cox 1995, 94-95; Gethin
1998, 222). The Theravāda theory of causal conditioning, as set
out in the Paṭṭhāna, proposes a set of
twenty-four conditional relations (paccaya) that account for
all possible ways in which a phenomenon may function in conditioning
the rise of another phenomenon. The twenty-four conditional relations
are: 1) root cause (hetupaccaya); 2) object support; 3)
predominance; 4) proximity; 5) contiguity; 6) simultaneity; 7)
reciprocity; 8) support; 9) decisive support; 10)
pre-existence 11) post-existence; 12) habitual
cultivation; 13) karma; 14) fruition; 15) nutriment; 16) controlling
faculty; 17) jhāna – a relation specific to
meditation attainments; 18) path – a relation specific to the
stages on the Buddhist path; 19) association; 20) dissociation; 21)
presence; 22) absence; 23) disappearance; 24)
non-disappearance.[14]
The majority of
the Theravāda twenty-four conditions have counterparts in the
Sarvāstivāda theory and both systems show various other
parallel interests and points of resemblance. The likelihood, then, is
that the two systems originated before the two schools separated and
continued to evolve after their separation (Conze 1962, 152–153;
Kalupahana 1961, 173).

Their differences notwithstanding, both the Sarvāstivāda
and the Theravāda theories of causal conditioning are based on the
notions that dharmas are psycho-physical events that perform
specific functions, and that to define what a dhamma is
requires one to determine what it does (Gethin 1992A, 150). It turns
out, then, that the relative positioning of each dharma within
a network of causes and conditions is, first and foremost, a means
for its individuation. Only in a subsidiary sense is
this network an analysis of causal efficacy. What reappears here is the
categorial dimension of the dharma analysis qua a metaphysical
theory of mental events in terms of sameness of conditional relations.
Analogous to the space-time coordinate system that enables one to
identify and describe material objects, the network of conditional
relations may be seen as a coordinate system that locates within it any
given dharma, implying that to be a dharma is to be
an event that has a place in that web of relations—an idea
reminiscent of Donald Davidson's principle of sameness of causes
and effects as a condition of identity of events (2001 119–120
& 154–161). Two dharma instances of the same type
would fit into the web of causal conditions in exactly the same way,
but would then be distinguished as individual instances on the grounds
of their unique degrees and modes of causal efficacy.

In attempting to account for what effects liberating insight and
what makes up the awakened mind, Abhidharma inquiries extended into the
field of epistemology. We have seen that the Abhidharma's
analysis of sentient experience reveals that what we perceive as a
temporally extended, uninterrupted flow of phenomena is, in fact, a
rapidly occurring sequence of causally connected consciousness moments
or cittas (i.e., assemblages of citta and
caitta/cetasika), each with its particular object. The mature
Abhidharma thus assimilates the analysis of
phenomena-in-time-as-constituted-by-consciousness with a highly complex
description of the consciousness process, dissolving the causal
relations between ordered successions of consciousness moments into the
activity of perception. As previously noted in section 2, for the
Abhidharma, as in Buddhist epistemology in general, sensory perception
is the paradigm of perceptual, sentient experience. Like every instance
of consciousness, sensory perception is intentional, encapsulated in
the interaction among the sense faculties, their corresponding types of
discriminative consciousness, and their appropriate sense objects.
Different Buddhist schools, however, held different positions on the
distinctive nature of perceptual experience, and on the specific roles
of the sense faculties and status of sense objects in it. The
Theravāda Abhidhamma and the
Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣika both espouse a view that
proposes a direct contact between perceptual consciousness and its
sense objects, the latter being understood as sensibilia, for
what we perceive are not objects of common sense but their sensible
qualities. We may characterize this view as phenomenalist realism
(Dreyfus 1997, 331 & 336).

The Theravāda Abhidhamma sets out its theory of the
consciousness process (citta-vīthi) in its commentaries
and manuals, mainly in the works of Buddhaghosa, Buddhadatta (5th
century CE), and Anuruddha (10th or 11th century CE), based on earlier
descriptions in the Dhammasaṅgaṇi and the
Paṭṭhāna (Vism XIV 111–124,
XVII 126–145; Dhs-a 82–106 & 267–287;
Vibh-a 155–160; Abhidh-s 17–21). The
theory is not separate from the dhamma taxonomy and the
analysis of citta as previously outlined in section 2. Rather,
in congruency with the notion of existence (whether categorial or
ontological) as functioning, it analyzes sensory perception as
resulting from particular functions that are performed by the
eighty-nine citta types revealed by the foregoing taxonomy.
According to this analysis, the specific functions in the consciousness
flow occur at particular instants of that continuum, as the normal flow
of consciousness involves the mind picking up and putting down sense
objects by means of successive sets of associated mental factors. The
result is a fairly static account of mental and material phenomena as
they arise in consciousness over a series of consciousness
moments.[15]

Restricting the account to the consciousness process of ordinary
beings, two types of process are described: five-sense-door processes
(pañcadvāra) and mind-door processes
(manodvāra). These may occur in succession, or mind-door
processes may occur independently. Five-sense-door processes account
for sensory perception as information is directly received from the
fields of the five physical sense faculties. Mind-door processes
internalize the information received through the sense faculties and
characterize the mind that is absorbed in thought or memory. Objects at
the “door” of the mind, which is treated in Buddhist
thought as a sixth sense faculty, may be past, present, or future,
purely conceptual or even transcendent. Normally, however, the object
at the mind door will be either a past memory or a concept. If there is
no perceptual activity, as is the case in deep, dreamless sleep, the
mind is in a state of rest called inactive mode
(bhavaṅga). Throughout one's life, the same type
of citta performs this function of the inactive mind that is
the natural mode to which the mind reverts. The mind switches from its
inactive mode to a simple mind-door process when a concept or memory
occurs and no attention is directed to the other five sense fields. The
simplest mind-door process is a succession of the following functions:
1) adverting to the object of thought: a function that lasts one moment
and becomes internalized as an object support; 2) impulsion: occurs for
up to seven moments and performs the function of the mind's
responding actively to the object with wholesome or unwholesome karma;
3) retaining: holding on to the object of the consciousness process for
one or two moments.

The mind switches from its inactive mode to any of the
five-sense-door processes when an object occurs at the
“door” of the appropriate sense faculty. This process of
sensory perception involves a greater number of functions: 1) disturbed
inactive mind: a function that arises due to the stimulus of the sense
object. It lasts for two moments, during which sensory contact takes
place, i.e., a physical impact of the sense object on the physical
matter of the appropriate sense faculty; 2) adverting: lasts one
moment, during which the mind turns towards the object at the
appropriate sense “door;” 3) perceiving: lasts one moment
and is the sheer perception of the sense object with minimal
interpretation; 4) receiving: lasts one moment and performs the
intermediary role of enabling transit to and from the appropriate
discriminative consciousness, whether visual, auditory, etc.; 5)
investigating: lasts one moment and performs the role of establishing
the nature of the sense object and of determining the mind's
response to that object that has just been identified; 6) impulsion:
same as in the mind-door process; 7) retaining: same as in the
mind-door process. As an example, visual perception involves not only
seeing itself, but also a succession of moments of fixing of the visual
object in the mind, recognition of its general features, and
identification of its nature. In both the mind-door and five-sense door
processes, the sense faculty and its sense object condition the arising
of a present moment of a corresponding apprehending consciousness, that
is, perception here is modeled on simultaneous conditioning. And in
both the mind-door and five-sense door processes, when the retaining
function ceases, the mind reenters its inactive mode.

The consciousness types that perform most of the functions that make
up the mind-door and the five-sense-door processes fall into the
category of resultant cittas, that is, those that are the
result of past actively wholesome or unwholesome consciousness. This
means that the experience of the sense data presented to one's
mind is determined by one's previous actions and is beyond of
one's immediate control. Whenever one remembers or
conceptualizes, sees, hears, smells, tastes, or touches something that
is desirable or pleasing, one experiences a result of previous
wholesome consciousness. And vice versa with objects that are
undesirable or unpleasing and previous unwholesome consciousness
respectively. Only in the final stage of the consciousness process,
when the mind has chosen to respond actively to its object in some way,
actively present wholesome or unwholesome consciousness operates and
constitutes karma that will bear future results. The Abhidhamma thus
“provides an exact small-scale analysis of the process of
dependent arising” (Gethin 1998, 216).

The Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣika proposes a similar
account of sensory perception, but argues that the sensory object
exists as a real entity. The Sautrāntika theory of perception,
however, is rather different. It rests on the Sautrāntika radical
view of momentariness, according to which there is no real duration but
only a succession of infinitesimal moments, and on its view of
causation, according to which causes cease to exist when their effects
come into existence. The application of these principles to sensory
perception makes it difficult to explain how perception directly
apprehends sense objects, for it implies that objects have ceased when
their apprehending consciousness arises. The Sautrāntika reply is
that consciousness does not have direct access to its sense objects. By
contrast to phenomenalist realism, the Sautrāntika view of
perceptual consciousness may be characterized as representationalism:
it sees perception as apprehending its objects indirectly, through the
mediation of aspects (ākāra) representative of their
objects (Dreyfus 1997, 335 & 380–381).

What is common to all the three main Abhidharma
traditions—Theravāda, Sarvāstivāda, and
Sautrāntika—is that they manifest a somewhat similar
paradigm shift towards reducing the phenomenal, causally conditioned
world into the activity of cognition and consciousness. This shift was
part of a broader movement in Indian philosophy in which Hindu, Jain,
and Buddhist thinkers turned away from traditional metaphysical
questions about the nature of the external world and the self, and
focused instead on the study of epistemology, logic, and language.
Their purpose was to provide systematic accounts of the nature and means
of valid cognition. Within Buddhist circles, this epistemological turn
saw the rise of thinkers such as Asaṅga and Vasubandhu, the
founders of the Yogācāra (400–480 CE), and, most notably,
Dignāga and Dharmakīrti (around 500 CE) who developed
sophisticated logical and philosophical systems (ibid, 15–19).
The Abhidharma, then, sets the stage for this epistemological turn.
The new emphasis becomes dominant from the period of the
vibhāṣā compendia onward and is evident in a
shift in the terminology used by the Abhidharma to describe the nature
of dharmas. This terminological shift is indicated by the
terms “particular inherent characteristic” (Skt.,
svalakṣaṇa, Pali, salakkhaṇa) and
“general characteristic” (Skt.,
sāmānyalakṣaṇa, Pali,
sāmānyalakkhaṇa).

The term lakṣaṇa/lakkhaṇa means a mark,
or a specific characteristic that distinguishes an indicated object
from others. The Logicians use this term in the sense of
“definition” of a concept or logical category. The
Abhidharma applies it to the practice of the discernment of
dharmas, distinguishing between multiple generic
characteristics a dharma shares with other dharmas
and (at least) one particular inherent characteristic that defines a
dharma as that very individual occurrence distinct from any
other instances of its type. The post-canonical Abhidharma thus
assimilates the concept of the particular inherent characteristic with
that of intrinsic nature. “Dhammas,” the
Theravādin commentarial literature states, “are so called
because they bear their particular inherent characteristics”
(Vibh-a 45; Vibh-mṭ 35; Paṭis-a
I 79; Vism XV 3), and a particular characteristic “is
the intrinsic nature that is not held in common by other
dhammas” (Vism-mhṭ II 137). Used in
conjunction or interchangeably with intrinsic nature, the particular
inherent characteristic constitutes a dhamma's unique
definition (Vism VI 19, 35). It is an epistemological and
linguistic determinant of a dhamma as a knowable instance that
is defined by a distinct verbal description.

The Mahāvibhāṣā of the
Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣika similarly distinguishes
between a dharma's particular inherent and generic
characteristics and identifies the former with intrinsic nature, thus
discriminating “levels in the apprehension or discernment of
dharmas that serve to clarify the ambiguity encountered in the
application of the term svabhāva to both individual
dharmas and to categorial groups” (Cox 2004A, 575). The
difference between the analytical description of dharmas in
terms of their intrinsic nature or their characteristics, notes Cox
(ibid, 576), is that “whereas intrinsic nature acquires
its special significance in the context of exegetical categorization,
the starting point for the characteristics lies in perspectivistic
cognition. Ontology is a concern for both systems, but the shift in
terminology from intrinsic nature to the characteristics reflects a
concurrent shift from a category-based abstract ontology to an
epistemological ontology that is experientially or cognitively
determined.” This new epistemological emphasis looms in through a
modified definition of existence proposed by the mature
Sarvāstivāda exegesis that sees the causal efficacy
underlying all existence as cognitive. Representing this development in
the history of Sarvāstivāda thought is Saṅghabhadra
(fifth century CE), who states in his
Nyāyānusāra: “to be an object-field that
produces cognition (buddhi) is the true characteristic of
existence” (ibid). This means that dharmas as
the constituents of our experiential world are objectively identifiable
through cognition.

In sum, the Abhidharma project, as evident by the dharma
theory and its supporting doctrines, is, at bottom,
epistemologically oriented. Yet the project also intends to ascertain
that every constituent of the experiential world is knowable and
nameable, and that the words and concepts used in the discourse that
develops around the discernment of these constituents uniquely define
their corresponding referents. The dharma analysis therefore
paves the way for conceptual realism: a worldview that is based on the
notion of truth as consisting in a correspondence between our
concepts and statements, on the one hand, and the features of an
independent, determinate reality, on the other hand. Conceptual realism
does not necessarily have implications for the ontological status of
this reality as externally existing. But to espouse such a position is
to make a significant move away from the earliest Buddhist teaching
that presents the Buddha's view of language as
conventional.[16]

–––, 1992B,
“The mātikās: Memorization, Mindfulness, and
the List,” in In the Mirror of Memory: Reflections on
Mindfulness and Remembrance in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, J.
Gyatso (ed.), New York: SUNY Press, pp. 149–172.

–––, 1994,
“Bhavaṅga and Rebirth According to the
Abhidhamma,” in The Buddhist Forum III, T. Skorupski and
U. Pagel (eds.), London: School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London, pp. 11–35.

–––, 1997,
“Cosmology and Meditation: from the
Agañña-sutta to the Mahāyāna,”
History of Religions, 36: 183–217.

–––, 1998:
The Foundations of Buddhism, Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press.